Comment by wraptile
3 days ago
How would Indonesians use cars that cannot go anywhere? It's not about affording but about people/m² compression.
Here's a quick napkin math: a 1.3m² scooter can take 1-3 people, a toyota camry of 8.8m² can take 1-5 people. This gives the humble scooter aprox 3-5 times the space efficiency that of a car.
Not to mention the agility and parking benefits of scooters. There's no way any SEA city could get rid of scooters in favor of cars. Scooters are incredibly under-rated in the west and my favorite tool here in SEA - it's peak practical engineering at scale.
That makes sense, but I have to assume driving a scooter is a pretty dangerous way to get around a giant city?
I have biker friends who call cars "cages", and I get the sentiment. But they have a lot more concussions than any other group of people I know.
I agree with other commenter and speed is primary danger for scooters. I've been driving for 7 years (mostly in Thailand) and never had an accident as the risk distributions is incredibly obvious:
- stay within reasonable speed
- keep distance
- don't do highways
- project your intentions very clearly with no sudden moves
vast majority of accidents happen when this simple rule set is broken (aside from obvious DUI). If you're driving 40km/h max in a city you are surprisingly safe, especially as scooter traffic culture is very river like so once you're familiar with the area you are basically being carried by the traffic.
Most stats of SEA scooter deaths are coming from really bad driving, as in drunk uncle driving a scooter on the opposite side of the road with no headlights sort of bad driving (sadly very common). The culture can be very unserious about scooter safety when it's quite achievable in practice. It really is an incredible form of transportation when taken seriously.
Since this is scooters who rarely even reach >150cc, it's actually quite safe since it's slow and light. There are always high risk when we want to go to very rough roads that are also full of trucks (common in rural areas), but in well maintained roads like lots of Jakarta, it's mostly fine.
Though it really isn't helped by attitude of people around here who aren't even wearing helms.